Community Building
Case study | A place to call home: Cultivating belonging in housing co-operatives
CHF Canada and the Tamarack Institute completed a second cohort of our housing co-op community building program in May 2024. This partnership seeks to support housing co-op members in leading projects within their communities to foster a sense of belonging and respect, and to cultivate relationships between members. Each participating co-op chose to pursue unique initiatives, and each community identified unique strengths and challenges along the way. This case study introduces each co-op, and provides insight into their collective and individual experiences in community building.
To work effectively as a team, it is important that we understand and agree upon what we want to achieve together. The most powerful and authentic shared visions emerge from a full understanding of one another’s personal visions. From the Tamarack Institute
Why are you engaging? Who are you engaging? How will you reach them? How will you know if it's going well? This canvas will help you explore the critical consideration of an engagement process, allowing you to pan and share key information in one place for discussion and refinement.
From the Tamarack Institute
When we speak about engagement, it's important to note that there are varying levels of engagement and that each level generates different responded from those who are being engaged.
From the Tamarack Institute
The Wheel of Involvement is a useful way to engage attendees at a workshop or consultation to quickly and easily provide you with input regarding their own desired level of involvement in the opportunities and work of your group going forward.
From the Tamarack Institute
The Collaboration Spectrum Tool
This tool will help groups decide where they are on the spectrum of collaboration. From the Tamarack Institute
Collaborative Governance Framework
From the Tamarack Institute
Establishing Principles for Working Together
Most collective impact and collaborative efforts benefit from establishing a core set of values and principles for working together. The time spent upfront agreeing to a core set of values and principles can save time over the course of the collaborative when sticky situations arise. From the Tamarack Institute
Continuous communication is a critical condition of collective impact. It's aim is to maximize engagement across the collective efforts and ensure that all partners understand how their individual efforts are contributing to the collective results.
From the Tamarack Institute
To effectively monitor changes as they are occurring, a simple tool has been developed called an Outcomes Diary. The diary, developed and used by the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR), a cross-sector community collaborative planning table, was used to document progress across three domains: changes impacting individuals and families; changes in community capacity and changes in policy and systems. From the Tamarack Institute
Developing a Framework for Change
More than a summary account of the community's plan of action, the Framework is meant to surface the guiding ideas behind the initiative so that they can be critically examined as the work unfolds. Are the community's key ideas about poverty reduction being borne out in practice? Based on the initiatives' practical experience, in what ways does its thinking need to be revised? By making its ideas explicit from the outset, the community establishes a foundation for its own learning. The lessons it draws from its experience will help build the body of knowledge for the wider field.
From the Tamarack Institute
Learn the basics of Asset-Based Community Development From the Tamarack Institute
5 Steps for Building Strong and Sustainable Groups
From the Tamarack Institute
The 4 Agendas in Collaborative Innovation
From CoCreative
Using ABCD to Build Community in Social Housing - video
This video is a great walkthrough of Tamarack's ABCD building blocks process. From the Tamarack Institute
Solving the Puzzle of Collaborative Governance - article
There is a substantive amount of literature about collaboration and collaborative work but relatively little that identifies the nuts and bolts of collaborative governance, including process, structure, accountability, engagement and effectiveness. This article is for changemakers encountering challenges with collaborative governance within their work. From the Tamarack Institute
Community Housing Transformation Centre Resource Inventory
Find the right resource to make your project a success with the Center’s Resource Inventory The Community Housing Transformation Centre’s Resource Inventory is a growing collection of 1500+ curated knowledge resources and practical tools created by and for individuals and organizations working across the housing sector in Canada. Explore a diverse range of resources covering property management, affordable housing development, financial management, governance, member and tenant issues, sustainable practices, sector innovation and growth, and more. Visit to check out the inventory or to share your resources with the sector: https://centre.support/resources/